


A Bard and A Witch Walk Down A Mountain

by addib



Series: Farewell Wanderlust [1]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends, Gen, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Friendship, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addib/pseuds/addib
Summary: Yennefer catches up with Jaskier as he's making his way down the mountain. Somehow the witch adopts the bard.
Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Farewell Wanderlust [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927075
Comments: 16
Kudos: 65





	A Bard and A Witch Walk Down A Mountain

Lilac and gooseberries. The intoxicating sign of one Yennefer of Vengerburg. Meletile help him. He didn’t want to talk to her. Geralt had effectively destroyed his ability to handle much of anything right now. If the sorceress says one wrong thing Jaskier knows he’s going to burst into tears. And she will never allow him to live it down. Going off the fact that he’ll see her again, but maybe destiny will be on his side for once in two decades. 

  
“Bard.”

  
Ah. So, Destiny shall give him another kick in the balls? He could work with that.

  
“Witch.”

  
“Stop acting like a child,” and then she had the audacity to fall into step beside him. Jaksier chanced a look at her. He used to claim the ability to read any one person or a whole crowd well enough to pick out the best song for them. Geralt had shaken his confidence in that. Among other things.

  
But she looked… not sad. Not exactly. Defeated? Hmmm, fuck. Fuck he was starting to sound like Geralt even in his head. Defeated she wept/ as she leapt to her feet/ fleeing his bite… bite? No. Stupid.

  
“Jaskier,” his name cut through the air with the annoyance of having been repeated far too many times for comfort.

  
“Yennerfer,” flat and as despising as possible. It’s not that Jaskier hated her, he did, but she was a scary sorceress so it’s not like he could be overly rude, and risk being cursed.

  
“So Geralt’s letting you walk down by yourself. My how you’ve grown,” and she even sounded amused.

  
“Throw yourself through a portal Yennefer,” Jaskier sniped. He wasn’t going to keep crying like he had been. He couldn’t look at her though. An ugly crier if there ever was one, Jaskier was big enough to admit it. The blotches would fade first, but the red around his eyes would stay for at least another hour or so.

  
“Ah how your quips do fall short bard. But honestly, Geralt would do anything for you. So, what has you walking alone on this exceptionally dangerous path?”

  
“I’m giving Geralt his one blessing,” he was studiously looking at his feet. Well, he was before his chin was promptly grasped and he was pulled to face violet eyes. Stumbling to a stop he bore witness to the fury that was the only thing Jaskier could see swirling through the chaos of Yennefer’s eyes. At least she had the barest level of kindness not to remark upon the rings of red adorning his.

  
“I have never before witnessed you wallowing in woe bard. Do not make me start now, you aren’t that entertaining when you don’t bite back.” She seemed genuinely concerned. But there goes more proof of him not being able to read anyone well. Or maybe he just can’t read immortal beings. Semi-immortal, whatever.

  
“Fine.” Jaskier stepped back out of her grasp, looking around until he found a background that suited him. Finally settling on one after a moment’s thought, he promptly flung himself onto the flattest part of a boulder. He raised his hand farthest from Yennefer to his forehead. He winked at her. “Oh, but woe is me. Oh, how my heart doth break for Geralt of Rivia. For he does so hate me. Wishes me gone off the side of a cliff never to bother him again.”

  
Jaskier was met with the most sarcastic applause he has ever had to bear witness to. The only other time being in a wordsmithing duel against Valdo. Now that would be a fun time to tally up, a ‘who hates Jaskier’ sort of game, going between Yennerfer, Valdo, and Geralt. Honestly it could easily be a threeway tie. That’s an image, a three way between the three people most likely to stab him.

  
“A wonderful play actor you are bard, but I won’t be tossing a coin your way for that performance,” she still didn’t look appeased. Yennefer was sizing him up, and to be quite frank he was starting to feel a bit like she was trying to get in his head.

  
Ah.

  
She was. That was the problem. Thank Melitele he kept “Toss a Coin” running on repeat in the back of his mind at all times around anything with power. He truly should have thanked Valdo for that tidbit from their first day of school, but to be fair the Troubadour of Cidaris had stabbed him just a little right after. _Sorceresses_. 

  
“Oh, but you are too kind Yennefer. I grace the continent with my theatrics to bring smiles upon the downtrodden not simply to earn coin,” he was smiling as he rose from his wonderful fainting boulder and ventured closer to her. She really did look lovely in that dress. The blank and slightly displeased look she was sending his way wasn’t the best match for it, though. He’d at least earned a simmering glare with that performance. She could at least throw some effort into her varying glares.

  
“Please for the love of Gods stop humming that insufferable song in your head,” Yennefer finally gave up, throwing her hands up and physically stepping back from the bard. Every time she had tried to get a glimpse of what had happened between Geralt and the bard she got shot with the droning cry of the continent’s most popular song.

  
“Well it is my head. Don’t see why it should bother you what I hum there.”

  
“He hurt you somehow.” Jaskier had to give her some credit. She couldn’t get past the song fully but apparently; she had glimpsed a…feeling? Sensation? Something. She was as emotionally stunted as her Djinn-made love though.

  
“Obviously your witchiness, didn’t you gather that from my marvelously impromptu performance,” he asked while collecting his lute and depressingly empty bag from where he left them to perform for a one witch audience. He probably had enough rations to last the night, but the nearest town was two days away. Jaskier hadn’t wanted to go through Geralt’s bag to get his share of the rations out of fear of incurring the witcher’s wrath moreover than he already had.

  
“I had assumed you were play acting, not being serious,” Yennefer’s raven hair picking up softly in the breeze. Her image softening along with her sinking heart. She had recognized that Geralt wasn’t the best to be around for extended periods of time, the whole reason they never traveled together and only met up for a night every so many months. But here she stood, facing a man that had weathered Geralt’s temper and moods for decades. The human was stronger than she thought.

  
“Allow me to escort such a damsel in distress down the mountain at least,” Yennefer turned and began walking. Jaskier had no idea how safe it was to follow her, but she was better than whatever would come out from the shadows come full sundown. The soft sunset was a beautiful backdrop with the wildflowers dancing in the breeze.  
_You belong among the wildflowers/ you belong with your love on your arm…_

  
“That’s… very pretty Jaskier,” Yennefer stopped long enough to let the bard catch up to her. He seemed to be drifting in another realm; his eyes trained on the mountain’s flowers. Yennefer let the half-formed lyrics and humming wash over her. It was a soft song; it seemed the bard was letting his feelings seep into his lyrics.

  
“Hm? Oh. Thanks.” He hadn’t seemed to fully acknowledge that he wasn’t singing out loud. Until… “Hey! No no no. Do not start that up again Witch.”

  
Several hours more of carefully walking back down the mountain saw the duo into full sundown. Yennefer, without turning to ask Jaskier for help of any sort, just seemed to enable a tent to appear in the small clearing they had found not ten steps from the path. Jaskier intimately recognized it as the tent she and Geralt had shared the night before. He didn’t know how he felt about how he was going to be expected to repay her. He didn’t like it, but as much as everyone seemed to assume that he was freely giving of his love, he’d exchange himself for things. Geralt certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford Roach’s fresh tack without Jaskier pitching in a night or two’s worth of extra work. And Geralt already thought him a whore, so he could at least get paid for the assumptions of others.

  
Yennefer pulled the flap of the tent open and let him in.

  
Honestly the tent was a thing of beauty. Bigger on the inside, it hosted separate offshoots of the main room: a bedroom, washroom, and what looked like a library. Everything colored in rich creams and golds. There was a fire blazing gently in the central hearth that had a hollowed out round table set around it. The place was almost… homey. Especially going by Yennefer’s usual design preferences of ‘as terrifying as possible’.

  
“Drop your things and bathe. You smell like the wrong end of a horse,” Yennefers back was to him as she spoke. Jaskier dropped his bag and gently placed his lute case by the opening and went to the washroom before he began working himself free of his red, and quite frankly filthy, doublet. If he had another, he’d have tossed it in the dwarves’ fire before leaving the mountaintop. 

  
“Close the flap for Melitele’s sake bard,” Yennefer called before the fabric rushed together in front of Jaskier’s face before he could move it. The tub was already filled and steaming by the time he managed to get fully undressed. He didn’t take his time with the bath, wanting to get out and get whatever Yennefer wanted out of the way so that he could sleep for a century and a half.

  
Yennefer had made herself quite comfortable in an elaborately carved chair at the table and was eating her fill when Jaskier emerged from the washroom. Once she looked up at him, with a roll of her eyes she flicked her hand to send him back into the washroom again. This time a set of fresh clothes and more water greeted him. “If you come out with dirt in your hair again, you’re sleeping outside. And for the love of gods take your time I can still smell you from out here.”

  
Such a kind woman, truly.

  
Jaskier scrubbed himself until his skin turned pink and his fingers were pruned. If life could give me one blessing it would be to take you off my hands. The memory sent a bolt of despair through the bard as he started scrubbing himself raw again. Yennefer decided though, that now would be the best time to barge in on a man in a tub.

  
“He said that to you?” She had her arms crossed and was framed beautifully by the firelight behind her. Her fury though, that was an odd juxtaposition. He really should write a song about her. Notably not for her, but one about her. To great and powerful of a woman to not have at least one ballad in her honor. “Idiot.”

  
And she stormed back out. Jaskier decided now would be a good time to get out of the tub. Then she came back in. Truly the witch needed to decide in or out. Honestly.

  
“I’d love to say that I can’t believe how idiotic that is of… Are you going to stand there with your cock out or are you going to put something on bard?” She was glowering, but Jaskier couldn’t tell if it was meant for him or for Geralt, who wasn’t even here. Jaskier didn’t make a move to dress.

  
“Can’t we just get it over with,” he asked propping himself on the rim of the tub. Yennefer didn’t say anything, and for once in his entire history of knowing her, the witch looked almost confused. “You fucking me. Can we please just get it over with or would you rather wait ‘til morning?”

  
“No,” she said with the same amount inflection as a knee jerk response. She seemed to shake herself after a moment. Jaskier shrugged and made to leave the washroom noticeably without his magically acquired bundle of clothes. “No. No as in I won’t be fucking you tonight bard. Hopefully not any other night either.”

  
Jaskier turned from where he had been about to leave and stared questionably at her for a moment. “Then how would you prefer me to repay you for your generosity?”

  
“For the love of Melitele’s tits put some clothes on. I can’t hold the first serious conversation you’ve ever been a part of with that hanging between us.” She turned around in a breeze of lilac and gooseberries and power and left. He dressed in the surprisingly soft shirt and breeches before emerging fully with hair just the wrong side of damp.  
Yennefer had resettled herself in her seat with a newly acquired goblet of wine, she gestured to the seat a bit down from her. Not across or beside, a neutral zone that he had been used to acknowledging but never being placed at growing up, instead being put in a place of powerfully humiliating shouting batches from his father. Jaskier had never been neutral on anything in his entire life.

  
“We will not be fucking bard, I want that to be entirely clear,” she took a long sip of her wine before a glass appeared in front of him as well. “And I do not see the connection of my rare but obviously extravagant act of kindness and us needing to do anything of the sort.”

  
“It’s a form of repayment Yennefer,” Jaskier took an equally large gulp of wine. “I’m afraid that if you were to ask for monetary reimbursement then I would be severely lacking. That leaves trading in an action of equal or greater value.”

  
“Fucking,” she stated dryly allowing her head to list just a bit more to the side to side-eye him.

  
“Yes.”

  
“Bardling, I hate to ever admit this. And I want it known that I am especially loath to do this in front of you. But you have still left me curious as to what, exactly, you’re getting at.” She had fully turned herself now. That intense violet gaze being cast upon him without any hope of diverting it.

  
“Yennefer you’ve lived at court. Bards aren’t considered all that different from whores. It wouldn’t be the first time-…” She cut him off.

  
“You’re offering your services of the bed chamber over your services in the mastery of the seven liberal arts which you received from the prestigious academy of Oxenfurt. This is also working under the assumption that I want to bed you, that I want repayment for my actions, and that I wouldn’t prefer your singing.” Oh, there was that glare again. Pity appeared to have taken up a moment of residence in the sorceress’s gaze as well.

  
“Yennefer, dear, you are tied to Geralt of Rivia. A man famous for hating my singing, my playing, my talking, my very existence. Pardon me for assuming that his destined love would actually be a fan of any of the qualities of which he does so despise me of.”

  
“Oh, would you please shut up,” she huffed and reached over to jerk the chair between them away to turn her chair and his to face each other. “I am not in the mood to have a battle of wits or to hear you prattle on without getting to the point. Speak plainly before this night is over.”

  
“Right,” Jaskier hadn’t exactly realized that he had managed to slip into a nobleman’s speech patterns. But here he was, fully being called out on it, and in possibly the nicest way in his history. “Bards are synonymous with whores. The only differences are in that bards sing and are welcome in court. I was offering myself up because I have no coin. I had assumed that you would hate my singing as much as your Djinn-wished soulmate.”

  
“You left something out. You had said that,” she started before being cut off by a pathetically pleading look sent her way by the bard.

  
“I’d rather leave that bit of history out of this conversation.”

  
She backed away from the topic. Both in trying to wheedle out any information in the bard’s un-guarded mind and in the physical conversation. She wasn’t a fan of making people feel as though they need to run away from her. Sure, a little healthy fright was nice every so often, but he had seemed ready to run at any given moment. She nodded in understanding that the topic at hand needed to change. So, she went back to what they talked about earlier and higher up the mountain.

  
“He did hurt you though.” The bard didn’t even seem fazed at the fact she was recalling a half-finished conversation from several hours ago. “How did he manage to get you to leave him alone?”

  
“I’m giving him his one blessing.”

  
“Yes. So, you’ve mentioned. That doesn’t answer my question,” she was growing irritated that he was talking around an answer again. He could tell.

  
“Why is it that whenever I find myself in a pile of shit these days; it’s you, shoveling it. The child surprise. The Djinn. All of it. If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands.”

  
Yennefer didn’t say a thing as she rose from her chair, her skirts sweeping behind her as she left the tent. Jaskier could feel a gentle nudge in his mind, an image of him sleeping surrounded by pillows popping up. So, he pulled his bedroll from his pack and laid it out near the entrance and slept soundly. For the most part.  
And then he was unceremoniously prodded into waking up.

  
Sitting up and bleary-eyed he looked around for whoever had decided that poking him was a good plan on waking someone up. Yennefer was standing above him with an honest to gods stick. Lovely.

  
“You started crying,” she said before turning around and climbing back into her bed. After a moment of silence and her glare cutting through the dark: “Come here you idiot.”

  
Jaskier hauled himself up off the floor and made his way over to the bed.

  
“You’re sleeping on top of the covers,” she said before handing him a thick blanket and gesturing for him to lay down with the air of a woman close to snapping at him. He made himself as comfortable as possible at the very edge of the bed before sleep finally claimed him again.

  
The next time he woke up it was to a pillow in the face and the smell of warm bread permeating the tent.

  
“You snore,” Yennefer’s voice cut through what was left of the sleep fog. She was standing on the far side of the bed. Well, as far side of the bed as she could be because at some point in the night Jaskier had made himself quite comfortable diagonally across the bed while also managing to apparently steal all of the covers. “Get up and eat.”

  
They didn’t discuss anything while they ate. Yennefer because she hated talking over meals when it was avoidable. Jaskier because he hadn’t eaten since the the whole dragon debacle. But once they had both eaten their fill, Yennefer magicked camp clean.

  
“Thank you, Yennefer. Truly,” he turned to her and gave a small bow. It wasn’t a ranking bow, but one of genuine thanks and respect. Yennefer bobbed her head in acceptance, but then she stared at the bard consideringly.

  
“We should travel together.”

  
“I’m sorry,” Jaskier asked, truly wishing he had a mouthful of water just then to do a spit-take. He was never prepared for truly dramatic moments.

  
“We should travel together. To be completely fair I’d almost feel bad, leaving you helpless and alone,” she smiled at him. It was small. And tight lipped, but it was a true smile none the less.

  
“You know what,” Jaskier smiled back at her, small but there. “Sure.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Hello. Howdy.  
> I hope everyone is doing well.  
> I started this little project back in July and I'm really tired of it sitting on my computer not being seen. So this is more or less an experiment to see if it's worth continuing into a whole thing or leaving it as a 3k oneshot.  
> Also, I'm a writing student. I thrive off of comments. So please toss a kudos or comment my way.  
> Honestly toss any and all creators kudos and comments if you could.  
> Have a lovely day.


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